The Extra Life Jacket
I had braced, on the drive over, for the possibility that I would hate this boy a little for being alive when my sons were not.
Instead I looked at him and felt something closer to the opposite, a fierce protective gladness, because he was what my family’s last act had purchased, and I wanted, more than I had wanted anything in years, for the purchase to have been worth it.
Chapter 26 — What Remained
A few days later we gathered on the shore of Lake Oconee — Abigail and I, and Zachary, and Raymond, and young Christopher.
It was the first time in six years I had gone to that water without the question clawing at me, and the shore looked different without it, softer, just a lake in the spring light.
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